Alcoholism and drug abuse is a major problem among the Aborigines because they have lost their purpose in life. They have lived in the outback for thousands of years and know of no other way of life.

Their way of life is becoming not only unpopular but impossible as well. Regardless of how much the government helps them, for the most part, they are unable to adapt.

To the aborigine, life was all about survival, we are taught a work ethic in order to improve our lot and to make a better life. The aborigine knew no such thing, because of their extreme environment, their only focus was survival, they don’t understand and laugh at us for working so hard.

People say to them that it must be great to live off the land, their reply is “If you think it is so great, try it!”

In the extreme environment, only the healthy babies were kept, they were suckled for seven years and if the mother couldn’t keep up with work and the child, the baby was killed.

It was a matter of survival.

Most tribes contained twenty to thirty people, with four or five in each family, some lived to be 100 and some had more than one wife, many times if the husband died, another man would take his wife so he could support her.

If the tribe became too large and there wasn’t enough food, the weaker ones were either killed or left to die.

They would rub animal fat on their bodies to shut down sweating in order to conserve water. They still don’t wear many clothes because of the heat, clothes create body odor.

In the dry years, women would not ovulate, they had zero population growth, sometimes the droughts would last ten years, so there would be no children born in that time. The lack of food and environmental stress ruined the sex drive.

When a woman first felt the kick of a child, the first animal they saw was believed to be it’s totem or spirit animal because that is the closest source of energy. It could be a snake, kangaroo or anything.

Same totems can’t marry, they know inbreds become stupid.

Because of the lack of rainfall, it took about six acres of land to support one person, they survived by eating whatever was available, including termites, ants and grub worms.

One of the highlights was meeting Ted Mitchell, one of the last Trackers, someone who could find an individual regardless of the environment. The story was told that a young child had gotten lost in the bush, after searching with helicopters, dogs and search teams, Ted was called in to help, within a half an hour he came back with the child in his arms.

The aborigines believe that when we visit a place, we leave an image, and a person trained to see that image can follow someone regardless of the terrain or how long they have been gone.

Their teachings show many examples of such happenings, as well as casting spells on someone thousands of miles away, the victim being affected by it even though he has no knowledge of the spell being cast.

The aborigine who has been taught the Dream time is very intuitive and extremely aware of his surroundings, Crocodile Dundee was all Hollywood, but not very far off on this perspective.

The songfest came to an end, our time to leave had arrived, we packed up our swag, our personal belongings and made our journey back to Cairns and civilization.